SCIENTIFIC GRAFTING.

Manawatu Herald, Volume III, Issue 12, 12 October 1880, Page 2

SCIENTIFIC GRAFTING.

♦ : — Dr J. H. Grirdner, house aurgeoa at Hellevue Hospital, has obtained some remarkable and valuable results in skin-grafting during the past year. One patient who required such treatment refused to furnish grafts from his own arms or body, owing to the pain involved ; and, unwilling to ask another to subject himself to a pain which the person to be benefitted was unwilling to bubmit to, Dr Girdner trsd the experiment of taking skin grafts from a corpse. The doctor says : ' I cut a piece of skin from a patient who died in the wards a few hours before, first taking care to inquire whether death was due to a poisonous disease or not. [ then cut the cuticle into small pieces, which I laid on the granulated Bui face of the ulcers, and bandaged the leg up very firmly. In three days the graft began to show signs of life, a perfect union having taken place, and in a week a splendid skin, smooth and elastic, had grown over the ulcerated part, making a complece cure and leaving no scar behind. Since that time I have treated upwards of fifty cases with invariable success. I have grafted the skin of an Irishman on a negro, and I have grafted the skin of a negro on an Irishman with ease. In both cases the skin lost its original colonr, and changed its hue to suit the wearer.